Study On Influence Of Internal And External Risks On Scale Of Grain-production Family Farms ——Based On Yangzhou City,Jiangsu Province

The family farm(FF),which is characterized by specialization,scale,and integration,is an important innovation in the "New Era" reforms of agricultural management systems in China to promote rural revitalization in the near future.Since 2013,grain-producing FFs(GP-FFs)have flourished throughout the country,but also face serious internal and external risks due to production practices as compared to traditional small-scale farmers,which have significant impacts on production and especially investments of capital,land,and technology.To date,relatively few theoretical and empirical studies have investigated the scale selection of the GP-FFs in China and there has been no empirical research on the risk perspective.Hence,the aim of this article was to assess the main risks faced by GP-FFs and the influences of various internal and external risks on production and management,especially scale selection,which has certain theoretical significance and important practical value.Based on a review of previous studies on the effects of agricultural risks on the scale of GP-FFs,this paper focused on production practices.The main external risks were classified into four categories,including nature,price,policy,and social risks,while the main internal risks were classified into asset-specific and technical risks.On this basis,this paper focused on the GP-FFs as the research object with different internal and external risks to establish an influence mechanism,analysis framework,and research hypothesis of different internal and external risks on the scale of GP-FFs.The internal and external risks in the production practices of GP-FFs were analyzed,measured,and described in consideration of the risk characteristics.Independent variables included the average change in the scale of GP-FFs in 45 towns in Yangzhou City,Jiangsu Province and 224 GP-FFs over a period of 6 consecutive years.Six different methods to measure internal and external risks were established and verified,and the influence of internal and external risks on the scale selection of GP-FFs was tested by regression analysis.The results showed the following.(1)The nature risk of the external risk had a significant negative impact on the scale selection of GP-FFs,which inhibited expansion of the scale of GP-FFs.The price risk had a significant negative impact on the scale selection of GP-FFs,which inhibited expansion of the scale of GP-FFs.The subsidy policy risk had a significant negative effect and the loan support policy risk had no significant impact on the selection of the scale of GP-FFs.The results also showed that social risk had no significant effect on the selection of the scale of GP-FFs.(2)The technical risk,which had relatively less influence,and the asset-specific risk of agricultural machinery both had significant positive effects on the selection of the scale of GP-FFs.The asset-specific risk of the land and agricultural labor force had no significant influence on the selection of the scale of GP-FFs.(3)From the perspective of internal and external risks,the scale change and selection of GP-FFs were contrarily affected by the expansion mechanism of investment and the contraction mechanism of operational failure.The asset-specific risks of the agricultural land and machinery also increased the risks associated with large-scale GP-FFs and promoted the stable development of the grain industry,at least to a certain extent.Based on these conclusions,combined with agricultural risk management strategies,different internal and external risk management strategies are discussed from the perspective of GP-FFs and government macro policies.To this end,we propose that:First,medium and long-term development plans should be formulated as soon as possible to promote the healthy and stable development of GP-FFs,while striving to avoid hesitancy of farmers to investment in expanding operations.Second,policies governing land transfer,agricultural machinery subsidies,financial subsidies,and project construction support should be studied,formulated,and implemented to effectively restrict the generation and development of large-scale and super large-scale GP-FFs.Third,the government should improve the abilities to identify risks and responses of GP-FFs through additional training and publicity to clarify the mechanisms that impact the risk of farm scale selection,while avoiding blind decisions regarding adjustments to the scale of GP-FFs and adoption of technology.Lastly,agricultural insurance policies should be improved and grain crop income insurance should be implemented in a timely manner.In addition,the government should stabilize and improve the grain industry and other supporting policies,and guide GP-FFs to form reasonable grain price expectations to adjust agricultural management policies.